when we heard Rita’s voice coming out of the open door. “Where did…? Wait, come back!” We quickened the pace.
“Don’t look back, Jem. Just keep going.”
I didn’t need to look back. In my mind’s eye, I could see her standing in the doorway for a while, watching us disappear, then turning back, picking up the five-pound bills, and holding them in her damp hand as she sank down into a chair. Breathing heavily in and out, thinking of us, thinking of Shaun…until she realized the newspaper was gone, put two and two together, and reached for the phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The town’s High Street was full of police informers. Every passerby was a pair of eyes and a mobile phone. While we’d been isolated in the country, I’d started to think we were just getting paranoid, that it was all in our heads, this need to run and hide. My picture on the front page of the paper told a different story. It was real. They were all out to get us. Walking along the road, it felt like it wouldn’t be long now. Even in a sleepy little market town in the middle of nowhere there were hundreds of people out and about: people who watched the news, went on the Internet, read newspapers.
Another thing was bothering me. Try as I might not to meet people’s eyes, I couldn’t avoid them all, and there they were again: people’s numbers. Telling me stuff about strangers, handing me their death sentences. I wanted to walk around with my eyes closed, to blot the numbers out. I didn’t want to be reminded that everyone around me was going to die. The reason was walking beside me, holding my hand. Spider. For the first time in my life, I had someone I wanted to keep hold of. The date on the paper — December 11 — was like a slap in the face. Only four days to go.
“Listen,” he said urgently. “We’d better buy some supplies quickly and then find somewhere to disappear. We’re too obvious here.”
He wasn’t kidding. There may have been a few people walking or driving along who were lost in their own thoughts, not paying us any attention, but everyone else was clocking us. I guess we were a pretty odd sight: two scruffy kids, one ridiculously tall, the other looking like a midget beside him. And I guess my hunch in the car had been right: Most of them didn’t see a black man from one year to the next. There were certainly no other black faces around today. It was like one of those programs on TV, only in reverse — you know, where some white guy goes into an African village and the kids rush up to him, touching his white skin and feeling his hair. Except no one was rushing up to us. They looked at us and looked away. One woman, coming toward us on the sidewalk, glanced up quickly and then made her kid walk on the other side of her, away from us. And I thought, Sod you, whatever we’ve got, it’s not contagious, you stuck-up cow.
We found a convenience store. Spider unwrapped some ten-pound notes from his wad of money and sent me in. I grabbed stuff as quickly as I could: a few chocolate bars and bags of chips again, yeah, but also some sensible stuff this time — water, fruit juice, cereal bars.
The store, squeezed in between an antiques shop and a greengrocer’s, smelled stale. It was packed from floor to ceiling with snacks and drinks, newspapers and magazines, loads of porno ones. It was like a little bit of London parachuted into the middle of nowhere. The guy behind the counter was reading a newspaper as I went ’round choosing. You could tell he was watching me.
I put the stuff on the counter. There were cigarettes behind him, so I asked for half a dozen packs, and then I spotted something else: three or four flashlights huddled together on the shelf. I bought two, and the batteries to go with them. He put the stuff in a couple of bags, watching as I fumbled with the money. He knows, I thought as I stood there. He knows.
He took the money. “Ta,” he said in a gravelly voice, like his vocal cords had been shredded by fifty years of smoking. Then, as I turned to leave, he called out. “Here…”
And I knew the game was up. What was he going to